In Wakefield, Massachusetts
After 10 long months of public hearings, dozens of letters to the editor, lawsuits and even protests in Wakefield Square, the Zoning Board of Appeals on July 29 approved three Special Permits that will allow Shelter Development to construct a 130-unit Brightview Senior Living facility on Crescent Street in Wakefield, MA. The project plans call for 69 assisted living units and 61 independent living units.
It remains to be seen if the decision will be appealed in Superior Court. After the meeting attorney Alan Grenier, who represents Andrea Sullivan of 12 Crescent St. in opposing the project, said that he would have to discuss the possibility of an appeal with his client.
There is a 20-day appeal period that begins when the ZBA’s written decision is filed with the Town Clerk. It could take as long as a month for the official decision to be written. It will then be reviewed by ZBA chairman David Hatfield before being filed with the Town Clerk.
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Filed under: News, Politics, Wakefield | 1 Comment
Tags: Ami Wall, architecture, Assisted Living, Brian McGrail, Brightview Senior Living, Charles Tarbell, David Hatfield, Eric Anderson, Fraen Corporation, John Kennedy, John Ogren, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, Michael Pierce, parking, Shelter Development, Special Permit, Town Meeting, traffic, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, ZBA, zoning, Zoning Board of Appeals
Project Healing Waters
“Fly fishing never takes you to an ugly place,” says Wakefield’s Joe Cresta, who runs a local chapter of Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, a national program that helps disabled veterans heal through the sport of fly fishing.
Fly fishing, Cresta points out, usually involves places like mountains, rivers and lakes.
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Tags: Alicia Reddin, disabled veteran, fishing, Fly Fishing, Greg Fowle, Joe Cresta, Malden Anglers Association, Mark Sardella, Project Healing Waters, Saugus MA, veterans, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA
‘The New Electric Ballroom’ runs through August 15
Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom, currently at Gloucester Stage is not a conventional play and therefore may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But if you’re up for a bit of a challenge, the rewards of this dark comedy are many.
The setting is a tiny island village off the coast of Ireland, in a cottage where three sisters have isolated themselves for the last four decades. Their self-imposed confinement is the aftereffect of the two older sisters’ traumatic experience 40 years ago, when their romantic hopes and aspirations were dashed on the same night by a visiting rock god after a concert at the local dance hall, the New Electric Ballroom.
Continue reading ‘A dark comedy of Ireland at Gloucester Stage’
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Tags: Adrianne Krstansky, Arshan Gailus, Catholic, Derry Woodhouse, Enda Walsh, Erika Bailey, Gloucester Stage Company, Ireland, Irish, Jenna McFarland-Lord, Mark Sardella, Marya Lowry, Maureen Lane, Miranda Giurleo, Nancy E. Carroll, New Electric Ballroom, play, Robert Walsh., Russ Swift, theater
What “Giving Back” Looks Like
If anyone wants an example of a civic group having a positive impact on the town, they need look no further than last July 4.
After more than a year of determined, hard work, the new Wakefield Independence Day Committee and its team of volunteers resurrected the largest Independence Day Parade in the state and in doing so brought back a Wakefield tradition for current and hopefully for future generations to come.
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Tags: 2015, Fourth of July, Independence Day, July 4th, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, Parade, parades, Patrick Sullivan, patriotism, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Independence Day Committee, Wakefield Independence Day Parade, Wakefield MA
Fear Factor
“Your decision will decide if Wakefield becomes more like Medford or more like Lynnfield,” attorney Alan Grenier warned the Zoning Board of Appeals last week.
Grenier had asked for and was granted an opportunity to present to the Zoning Board the opposition case against building the 130-unit Brightview Senior Living facility proposed on Crescent Street. Grenier’s client is Andrea Sullivan, who lives at 12 Crescent St.
The size and density of the proposed Brightview project, Grenier maintained, was more in character with the city of Medford than the upscale Lynnfield.
Grenier also suggested that with units priced in excess of $5,000 per month, few people from Wakefield would be able to afford to move into Brightview’s local facility.
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Filed under: Columns & Essays, Humor, Opinion, Politics, Wakefield | 1 Comment
Tags: Alan Grenier, Assisted Living, Brightview Senior Living, CVS, Dollar Tree, elderly, Galvin Middle School, Lynnfield, Malden, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, Medford, Melrose, Shelter Group, Topsfield, urbanization, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Zoning Board of Appeals
With the opioid addiction problem at epidemic levels, knowing what to do in the event of an overdose is more important than ever.
Area residents recently had an opportunity to learn what to do in the event of an opiate overdose and to receive training in the use of Narcan, a drug that can reverse an opiate overdose in a matter of minutes if given in time.
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Filed under: Feature stories, News, Wakefield | 1 Comment
Tags: drug abuse, drugs, Heathy Streets Outreach Program, heroin, hydrocodone, Mark Sardella, Mary Wheeler, Massachusetts, morphine, Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition, Naloxone, Narcan, opiate, opioid, overdose, oxycodone, oxycontin, WAKE UP, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Unified Prevention Coalition
Gloucester Stage‘s current production, Out of Sterno, is unlike any comedy you’ve seen, and one that you’re almost guaranteed to like.
While teetering on the edge of theater of the absurd, Deborah Zoe Laufer’s play hangs on to just enough realism to make the audience believe in and care about its central character, Dotty, who lives up to the dictionary definition of her name as “amiably eccentric.”
Dotty (played by a brilliant Amanda Collins) lives happily in a cluttered, junk-strewn apartment in the city of Sterno with her husband, the dangerously sexy bad boy, Hamel (Noah Tuleja). For the seven years of their marriage, Hamel has forbidden Dotty to leave the apartment or to speak to anyone, even her family.
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Tags: Amanda Collins, David Wilson, Deborah Zoe Laufer, Elisabetta Polito, Gloucester, Gloucester Stage, Jennifer Ellis, Jon Savage, Mark Sardella, Meg Tracy Leddy, Noah Tuleja, Out of Sterno, Paula Plum, play, Richard Snee, Russ Swift, theater, theatre
Prohibitionist’s Journal
by Mark Sardella
If you still buy into the myth that potheads are mellow, live and let live types, try suggesting that weed might not be the next penicillin. To paraphrase an old saying, hell hath no fury like a stoner scorned.
Oppose legalization of marijuana and, if you’re lucky, the worst they’ll call you is a “prohibitionist.”
But if historical Prohibition has taught us anything it’s that once a drug is legal, it’s over. Even if legalization proves to be an utter disaster, you’re stuck with it. You can’t go back and make it illegal again.
So we should think long and hard before legalizing another substance that has one purpose and one purpose only: intoxication.
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Tags: alcohol, cannabis, children, cigarettes, Colorado, drugs, education, legalization, marijuana, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, OD, overdode, pot, prohibition, prohibitionist, stoner, substance abuse, tobacco, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield High School, weed
A League of Their Own
As you may have noticed, protesting is back in vogue.
Beyond the immediate complaints, it’s hard to know exactly what has spawned the recent resurgence in this trend of seeking redress of grievances by “singing songs and carrying signs,” as The Buffalo Springfield once sneered.
Maybe part of it is aging Baby Boomers and their grandchildren nostalgic for the idealism and camaraderie of The Movement.
Except, through the normal evolution of human society many of the social ills that were protest targets in the middle of the 20th century are at least being addressed. We’re far from perfect, but we’ve come a long way in the last 50 years.
So what’s left for the modern-day seeker of social justice? Have all of the forces of evil been defeated?
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Tags: Assisted Living, Baby Boomers, Brightview Senior Living, Buffalo Springfield, demonstration, Koch Brothers, Mark Sardella, protest, Shelter Development, social justice, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, Zoning Board of Appeals
Through June 20, 2015
The Apple Family moves to Gloucester Stage for Sweet and Sad, part 2 of Richard Nelson’s quartet of plays that explore major events or anniversaries through the eyes of an ordinary family. Part 1, That Hopey Changey Thing, was produced at Stoneham Theatre last winter.
If That Hopey Changey Thing, was more focused on politics, the second installment delves deeper into the personal and emotional lives of the six characters as they share a meal at the Rhinebeck, New York home of Barbara Apple (played by Karen MacDonald).
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Tags: 9/11, Apple Family Plays, Bill Mootos, Crystal Tiala, David Wilson, Gail Astrid Buckley, Gloucester Stage Company, Joel Colodner, Karen MacDonald, Laura Lautreille, Mark Sardella, Marsha Smith, memorial, memory, Paul Melendy, Rhinebeck NY, Richard Nelson, Russ Swift, Sarah Newhouse, stage, Stoneham Theatre, Sweet and Sad, theater, theatre, Weylin Symes
Mark Sardella 